DesignAday

Disney Movie Snub

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:24:00 -0400

I have young children, and some years ago signed up for the Disney Movie Club. I don’t often order DVDs from them, but I haven’t taken the effort to close my account. Once a month I receive notification about the selection of the month and have to go on their website and say I don’t want it.

For months now, their website has been completely borked in Safari.

I had to use LittleSnapper to take the screenshot, as I can’t even see the sign-in fields without scrolling. It displays correctly in Firefox, and I assume it loads perfectly in IE. Now, I consider myself an expert in HTML and CSS. I have to deal with cross-browser compatibility issues every week. The differences between Firefox and Safari are negligible. I use CSSEdit, which previews using Webkit, and 99.999% of the time, if it is displaying correctly there, it is perfect in Firefox. Then I have to figure out the extra styles I need to add to get things to work correctly in IE.

For a commercial website to be broken this badly in a major web browser in this day and age is inexcusable, especially for a company as big and universal as Disney. And it isn’t just the login page—although it is the worst example—it’s the entire site! Background images repeat where they shouldn’t. Content is misaligned. Background colors are interrupted in strange ways.

It is obvious that somebody at the company said, “I don’t care. If they want our website to look nice, they’ll use IE or Firefox.” Well, I certainly care, and I’m going to let them know about it. I’ve been meaning to cancel my account anyway.

Update: I played hide-and-seek with their website, trying to find a way to contact them about canceling my account. I finally ended up having to type “How do I cancel my account?” into a field on their FAQ page (The question wasn’t listed in the FAQ). This took me to a page that answered the question—you have to call them. So, I called the number listed and played hide-and-seek with their phone menu. There was no option for canceling an account, but I was finally able to get the “…or please hold to speak with a customer representative” line. Of course, I was then presented with a message explaining that today is a holiday and to please call back later. They aren’t making me feel any worse about my decision to cancel.

Touch My Shag

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:08:07 -0400

If you have been reading this blog regularly, you know that I recently purchased a Nissan Cube. I’ve been enjoying the car quite a bit. I still have yet to see another one on the road, and everyone asks me about it.

One feature of it in particular always seems to pique people’s curiosity. “What is that thing on the dash?”

Nissan calls it a Shag Dash Topper. It sits right in the middle of the dash, in a slight depression, and is colored to match the interior of the vehicle. There is nothing practical about it, as is evidenced by their own marketing:

“Everything’s better with shag. This two-tone dash topper with velcro backing sits in place right up front.”

That doesn’t keep people from theorizing, though. Many have suggested that you could set your phone there and it would keep it from sliding off. I don’t think so. Almost everyone asks if it came with the car or if I put it there, which I find rather amusing. Most people ask what it is for, and some insist that it must be there for a practical purpose. Really? Why? Why can’t it just be there because it is quirky? Isn’t it enough that it attracts attention and starts conversations? Men typically make fun of it, but nearly everyone, especially women, have to feel it.

I initially thought it was rather silly, but I have come to adore it, if for no other reason than the reactions it provokes from other people. One of the primary design goals of the Cube is to be fun, and my impractical shag dash topper is certainly that.

Heavy Duty

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:37:13 -0400

I was eating leftover steak for lunch today, and I was having a hard time of it. My company stocks the entire office, including the kitchen, from Staples. I guess that easy button works. In one cabinet above the sink, there is a box full of plastic spoons, another containing forks, and a third offering knives. All of them say “Heavy Duty”. Now, I’d like to know what specifications had to be met to earn that designation. As I tried to cut my steak, the handle of the fork was bending, and the knife wasn’t cutting so much as it was wearing through the meat. This plastic cutlery is the wimpiest of any I can recall using. I’ve had the tines of my fork curl from the heat of my lasagna. The fact is, they labeled them “Heavy Duty” because they will sell more that way. There is no body like the FDA making sure that their cutlery adheres to some standard of rigidity.

Software is very often marketed in exactly the same way. “Easy-to-use” is a marketing catch phrase that typically has no scientific basis. The software is easy to use because they say so. Not only is there no standard metric for measuring ease of use, it is a completely contextual claim. A piece of software may be considered easy to use because it only takes a week of training vs. a month, or because it has a GUI rather than a command line, or because it has half the features of its competitors, or because it uses the same UI conventions as another piece of software the users may already be familiar with. Software may be easy for a specific group of users, while completely obtuse for another.

So the next time you are describing something as being easy to use, remember to ask, “In comparison to what and for whom?” Heavy duty is often a lie, and ease of use is in the eye of the user.

Practical Lessons from Games: Rewards

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:02:52 -0400

Whether it is the singular distinction of being “the winner,” access to additional content, or monetary in nature, every game benefits from a reward system. Certainly, games are played because they are enjoyable, but the reward is what makes any task within a game worthy of the time and effort spent. For shorter games, there may only be a single pay-off at the end. More involved games will likely have multiple, relatively small rewards building up to the end game finale. Such rewards are typically in-game, giving you more lives, more power, new abilities, better equipment, or allowing access to other areas of the game.

Then there are games like World of Warcraft (WoW), in which the game never actually ends. Such games must incorporate many different reward systems to keep players engaged. In a relatively recent patch, for instance, WoW added “Achievements” that keep track of all manner of things you can do in the game that aren’t actually necessary to progress. You collect achievements completely for the sake of collecting them—there is no benefit to your character. It is a surprisingly effective mechanic that adds yet one more layer of gameplay onto an already rich environment.

Such reward systems have only rarely been included in business applications. For example, Quicken will congratulate you every time one of your accounts balances. This isn’t particularly compelling, but imagine if it were taken a few steps further. First, pick a behavior that you want to encourage in your product—say, saving money. Set a goal, or allow the user to set one. In the case of saving money, the goal could be a significant purchase, or it could simply be a continuously tracked metric, such as setting aside $100 a month. Now assign a reward. If the goal is a significant purchase, that is the reward. For a continuous goal, there should be various levels at which the user is rewarded, some of them with small rewards and larger rewards at longer intervals. To keep the goal forefront in the user’s mind, visualize their progress.

This approach could be applied to software development, secretarial duties, lab work, education—practically any job that utilizes computer software and has trackable metrics. Sales people are already compensated in rewards-based systems. It doesn’t even have to be that tangible. Hybrid vehicles have incorporated rewards to encourage efficient driving behaviors.

Rewards are powerful motivators that can be used to advantage in software applications. They can encourage good behaviors, and sometimes just make otherwise boring tasks more enjoyable.

In the Details: Brightness

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:04:56 -0400

When you turn the headlights on, a car assumes that you are driving at night and dims the dashboard lighting. Of course, you may have turned them on because you are driving through a construction zone, or because it is raining, in which case, the dash doesn’t need to be dimmed, and it becomes hard to see. For these cases, a control is included that allows you to adjust the brightness of the dashboard lighting.

In my PT Cruiser, it was a dial that first returned the dash to daytime brightness, and then turned on the interior lights if you kept turning it. My Cube has a button on the instrument panel right beside the one that cycles through various displays such as gas mileage and the trip meter. I don’t know what the designer of this particular feature was thinking. There must be a dozen brightness levels, and you have to hold down the button for a good ten seconds or so to cycle through them. So, when I turn on my headlights in the daytime, to see my instrument panel, I have to press and hold the button as it gets dimmer and dimmer, finally turning off completely, and then turning on at full brightness.

I can think of no reason that I’ll ever need any of the brightness levels other than full brightness and the single step down that it takes when the headlights come on. I wouldn’t mind all of the levels being there if it were a single, quick action to switch between the two that I will use. Why on earth would you want to turn it off altogether? It seems to have been done simply because it could be done, without any thought given to how it would be used.

The Details Are Not the Details

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The details are not the details.
They make the design.
Charles Eames

I was recently asked by a developer that doesn’t know me very well if I thought the little details were all that important. Eames’ quote literally exploded in my head.

The details are the distinguishing factors that make the iPhone something more than the knock-offs. The details are the decision points that lead you to choose an OXO Good Grips potato peeler over that other one. The details lead people to shop at Target rather than Walmart, to eat at Panera instead of Quizno’s, to pick out a pair of Nikes, order from Amazon, and play World of Warcraft.

But the details run deeper than just brand loyalty and rampant consumerism. The details can evoke emotion. They can turn an object into an heirloom, a service into a relationship, or an experience into a lifelong memory. The details are what make Disney World magical. They make a Pixar film ten times better than any other animated feature on the big screen. They make the Harry Potter novels just as riveting to my sixty-year-old mother as they are to a high school kid.

What I’m insinuating, is that the details are the embodiment of quality. The details make something special. If you aren’t thinking about the details, you aren’t designing.

A Cup of Joe

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:00:00 -0400

Today is the final day of the IxDA fundraising effort. If you have not already, please make a contribution. The organization will be engaging developers to implement its design for a new platform that will include a more robust forum, sections and tools for local groups, social networking features, a job board, and many other capabilities that the current site can’t support. This organization is growing rapidly, and we need infrastructure in place that will enable us to better serve the design community.

There are a lot of us, which means it doesn’t take much from any one person if we all chip in. If everyone would give a dollar or two, we would surpass our goal. Please consider the value this organization brings to our field. It’s worth a lot more than a cup of joe.

An Appeal to English Teachers

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:00:00 -0400

Once upon a time, the only way to imprint type on a page was with a press. This was done by typesetters—expert professionals that understood the rules of typography. Then along came the typewriter. Yes, typewriters were convenient, but due to technical constraints, they could not duplicate the detailed craftsmanship of set type. They employed monospace fonts, in which every letter takes up exactly the same amount of space on the page. The Roman alphabet was not designed to be displayed in such a fashion, and as such, readability suffered. Due to the uniform letter spacing, a single space was not enough to sufficiently separate one sentence from another. For this reason, the practice of double-spacing after a period was introduced. People were taught to type that way. High School students were required to double-space their sentences when they turned in essays. The technique became ingrained in several generations of the populace.

In the mean time, technology advanced. Typewriters have been replaced by computers and high resolution printers. We now have more control over type and the printed page than ever before. In fact, our software now takes care of most of the fine points of typography automatically, from kerning and leading to ligatures and en dashes. What’s that? You don’t know what an en dash is? Don’t worry, Microsoft Word does. We have a large selection of quality typefaces, and monospaced fonts have been relegated to programming code editors.

And yet, everyone still dutifully enters the double-space after every period. They do so because that is the way they were taught. They don’t know that the extra spaces create holes, turning text blocks into swiss cheese. They don’t realize that it hinders readability. The teachers continue teaching the practice because they don’t know any better either. That’s what they were taught too. Graphic Designers are the only ones that are taught about this, and it doesn’t happen until they are in college.

I know this blog is not read by English teachers—I’m preaching to the choir, and likely some other ministers. So you, reader, have a duty. If you know an English teacher, please send this to them, or point them to this passage from The Elements of Typographic Style. It’s high time we all give our thumbs a break and lay off the space bar. If we are going to break this bad habit, it has to start with them.

The Bane of Web Design

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:00:00 -0400

Very rarely do I feel the need to rant on DesignAday. I spent hours today trying to solve what should be a very simple layout issue. I have a variable width div that I need to center within the window. I achieved this without a problem in Safari and Firefox. True to form, IE threw a wrench in the works.

In IE, the div is expanding to fill the width of the screen, instead of fitting to the width of its content. I spent hours trying to fix it. I finally figured out that IE doesn’t like the fact that I have some content within the div that I have floated right. I must have tried a dozen different approaches this afternoon to get some semblance of the layout I have designed, but to no avail. By the time I left the office, I had retreated to a fixed width div in which long lines of content will truncate with an ellipsis. However, there is a new layout issue plaguing me that I’m still trying to resolve. At this rate, I’m going to be resorting to using a table.

IE truly is the bane of web development. I would love to see a tally of the man hours spent troubleshooting its incompatibilities with web standards. I fervently wish we could forget about it—stop supporting it—and tell our customers to get a real web browser. But we can’t. IE has a chokehold on the industries in which our products are used. It has only been within the past year that we’ve been able to stop developing for IE 6 (what a nightmare that was)! I know IE 8 is a significant improvement, but I’ll be stuck developing for 7 in the foreseeable future.

Rant over. We’ll now return to our regular programming.

Giving Back

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:00:00 -0400

The Interaction Design Association started as an email discussion list back in 2003. I subscribed and made my first post to the list in January 2005. Since that time, I’ve been an active participant. As I am the only Interaction Designer at my company, the list has been an invaluable method of staying connected with others in the industry and keeping up to date with everything from books and conferences to firms and best practices. It has been an outstanding resource, and every post is available and searchable. In 2005, what was the Interaction Design Group (IxDG) incorporated as a not-for-profit organization and became the IxDA. The discussion list moved to the web, and 2008 saw the first conference. In addition to the global organization, IxDA has around 70 local groups around the world.

One of the things that makes the IxDA unique among professional organizations is that there is no cost for membership. All it takes to be a member is to declare that you are one. Hopefully, if you do so, you’ll take it a step further by actively participating through the discussion forum, your local group, the conference, one of the many initiatives, or any combination thereof.

As there are no dues, IxDA relies primarily on the money it makes from the conferences. Currently, however, it is developing a next-generation platform to serve the needs of the community. This effort requires additional funding, and we’re looking for contributions. The goal is to raise $30,000 in the next four days. A drawing will be held each day, giving those who have contributed that day a chance to receive a complimentary registration to next year’s conference, interaction ’10 in Savannah, GA.

Have you benefited from IxDA? Have you had questions answered on the forum? Have you made a contact at a local meet-up? Would you like to give something back to the organization and help it continue to give value to our community? I’ll be supporting it with my donation, and I encourage you to do the same.

Perspective

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:37:16 -0400

As I write this, my wife is winging her way towards Honduras as part of a mission team from our church. Their work will focus on potable water and hygiene. There are many kinds of problems in the world, and most of them could benefit from design in some way. I admit that I typically throw a pretty wide net when it comes to the design umbrella. But I also understand that design is only one player in any problem space, and there are a lot of problems that need muscle, sweat, and compassion much more than they need design.

San Jose is a small village on top of a mountain. By our standards, the people there live in poverty. However, they are happy, and they enjoy the life they are living—they don’t really understand what they are “missing”. There is no cell phone coverage, all though there are a couple of satellite phones for emergencies. Most of the people there don’t own a single book. The team’s food must be prepared with bottled water. There is no electricity. Once a day, they fire up a generator so that the mission team can use the single computer. They’ll be posting on a blog daily.

There’s really nothing an Interaction Designer can contribute to help these people that any other able-bodied person couldn’t do. It’s good to take a step back occasionally and put the problems I deal with on a daily basis into perspective.

3.0h yeah!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:37:00 -0400

I spent some time last night kicking the tires on iPhone OS 3.0. I still have the original iPhone, so I don’t have access to all of the new features, but overall I’m quite pleased. It is noticeably faster than the previous version—especially load times for webpages.

The first thing I did after the update was to run through all of the preferences, and I’m glad I did. All of the new features, from Find My iPhone to synching of notes, were turned off. That seems like a poor default choice. How many people will expect the new features to “just work” and wonder why they don’t?

Of course, the first feature I tried out was Cut, Copy, & Paste. The feature works as advertised, and it’s hard to imagine a better solution. The one inconsistency that I imagine is bothering somebody over there is that a double-tap will select text in every application except for Safari, which has been using that action to zoom. To access the capability in Safari, you have to bring up the magnifying glass.

I’m glad that they are finally providing the landscape keyboard in all of the applications, as it is much faster to type with two thumbs than a single finger. I can’t hold the phone and use my thumbs in the portrait orientation—it’s too narrow. I’ll likely be more verbose in email and SMS.

It’s hard to pick a favorite new feature, but the auto-fill in Safari is in contention for that honor. I depend on it so much on the desktop that my wings are clipped when trying to do things on my phone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have synched over the login data, so it will be awhile before I’m getting the full benefit.

Spotlight Search is fast—enough so that, depending on your current location in the UI, it may be quicker than opening the address book to find someone. It even searches the content of mail that is on the phone.

One change that confused me briefly is that the address book and calendar apps make a distinction between content that has been synched from the desktop, and that which is synched from MobileMe. The first time I opened the address book, all of my contacts were doubled. I was afraid a synching error had a occurred and opened up Address Book on my Mac to see if they had been duplicated there as well. Finding that they had not, I explored further and discovered that the phone allows me to view only the contacts from one or the other, and now that I’ve selected the desktop source, it seems to always open in that view. The calendar works the same way.

It’s a small thing, but there was one more change I noticed that is a big improvement. The very first time I tried to purchase music on my iPhone, I was on a business trip, and I wanted to get Marc Cohn’s new album to listen to during the drive home. When I attempted the purchase, it told me that there was a new Terms of Service Agreement that I would have to accept, but that it would have to be done through iTunes on my Mac. I couldn’t purchase anything until I got home. Well, while I was fooling around with the new OS, I told it to download updates to a couple of apps. I got an alert about a new Terms of Service Agreement, and then it allowed me to review the agreement and accept it.

I wouldn’t say it’s like having a new phone, but for a free update, I’ll take it. I’ll get the new phone in a few months when my finances have recovered from purchasing the new car, new video camera, new lawn mower, etc.

Separation

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:25:00 -0400

The Rule of Separation, from Eric Raymond’s book The Art of Unix Programming, states that you should “Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.” This one translates fairly directly to user interface design. Always be on the watch for policy decisions.

There have been countless instances in which I have been asked by a developer which way something should be implemented, when the answer is “both”. One customer may want it one way, while another will desire the opposite. In fact, a single client may need it to work one way for a certain class of users and the other for a different class. Policy decisions should almost always be turned into preferences or configuration settings, providing a flexibility in the product that will make it more useful to more people.

I’ve got a Hunch

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:10:04 -0400

I’ve seen a little bit of buzz about the new “decision-making tool” Hunch, so I took it for a spin last evening. I’m impressed with its robust feature set, but a bit dubious about its utility.

The first thing I did was search for “Where should I eat lunch on Friday?” The closest topic match it presented was “What should I eat for lunch?”, although there were a number of topics like “Where should I eat in Seattle?”. It then asked me seven or so questions about my preferences before giving me its answer: Mexican Food.

Thus far, I was unimpressed. But, I decided to delve in a little deeper. I started with the homepage, which asked me a series of twenty questions and then prompted me to sign up for an account so that it could save my preferences and learn from my answers.

Once my account was set up, I decided to try something a bit more focused. I recently purchased a new lawn mower, so I searched for “electric lawn mower” and found an appropriate topic: “Which type of lawn mower should I buy?” I answered a few questions, and it suggested that I should acquire an electric lawn mower. One of the features on the result page is “Pros & Cons from People like You”. The first entry listed dealing with an electric cord as a con. Well, I got a cordless electric mower, and there really should be a distinction made. So, I figured this was a good opportunity to try out the user contribution portion of the site.

I created “Cordless Electric Lawn Mower” as a new result, selected a picture to illustrate it, marked which of the answers to the existing questions applied to it, created a new question with four answers, and finally marked which of the existing results applied to each of my new answers. To Hunch’s credit, this was a very easy process, and I felt completely comfortable throughout the entire process.

While I think the interaction design of the tool is quite good, and I rather like the concept, it is questionable whether or not it will ever become more than an amusing diversion. So far, the few topics I’ve explored have been superficial at best. The lawn mower question, for example, needs to be fleshed out in much finer detail, asking about swappable batteries, cutting width and height, mulching vs. bagging, self-propelled and motor-assisted propulsion, and so forth, narrowing down not to a broad category (of which one is grazing animals), but to specific models. I could do this, but you would have to pay me to take the time. I only entered the one result I did because I wanted to try it out of professional interest. I have no compulsion to contribute more.

I love the concept, and who knows—maybe it will become as popular and useful as Wikipedia, but I have a hunch it will be a minor player.

A Reason for Everything

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:09:48 -0400

A good designer must have a reason for everything. Every detail is the result of a decision, made consciously or unconsciously. The designer should document decisions for any issues that were deliberated over or contested. He must also recognize the subconscious decisions and understand the reasoning behind them when asked to explain. If a client ever receives an unsatisfactory answer, such as “I don’t know,” or “I just thought it looked better,” they have carte blanche to overturn any decision the designer has made.

When evaluating one’s own work, a designer should continually ask herself why. Why did she use that color? Why did she place a particular element in that exact spot? Why is it that specific size? Perhaps these were intuitive decisions, but there was still a reason behind them. Understanding those reasons will make a designer more confident in communicating the solution to others, leading to more trust from clients and other collaborators.

There is a reason for everything. If you don’t have a reason, you haven’t given enough thought to your design.

The De-evolution of Print

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:45:45 -0400

I’ve been designing Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) viewers regularly my entire career. I’ve literally lost count. Most of the clients I’ve worked with are in the process of moving from paper manuals to electronic ones. This also means that their authors must transition their tools and processes. Whereas they have been laying out pages for print in applications like Framemaker, they must now learn an authoring language, such as 87269, DITA, or S1000D, and the software that creates content based on those specifications.

As a designer trained in typography and page layout, it grieves me to listen to them discussing the trade-offs that must be made. They lose control of the details of print. They can no longer introduce a discretionary hyphen to get rid of a widow or introduce an extra line break to move a heading onto the next page with the paragraph it introduces. The stylesheet is king, and the author is confined to the tags it will generically interpret.

Much as has been done on the web, we smother the skills of professionals for gains in automation and speed. We trade aesthetics and decades of refined craft for ascetic uniformity and the affordable signature of “good enough”.

iPhone 3G S(omeday)

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:59:00 -0400

The big announcements about the new iPhone 3G S Monday were a better camera, video capabilities, voice control, a built in compass, and improved performance. So, should I replace my first generation iPhone?

The performance increase is to be expected. A faster processor and more memory, along with more storage space and longer battery life, is always a good thing. The phone is even ready for 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, but AT&T won’t be done rolling that out until sometime in 2011, and I’ll be ready for a fifth-generation iPhone by then.

A lot of people are excited about the camera. It is 3 megapixels and will autofocus, even for extreme close-ups. You can also tell it where to focus by tapping a point within the image. I know the phrase “The best camera is the one you have with you,” but I really don’t use the camera in my phone very often. When I do, it’s typically to get a snapshot of something that I want to share here on DesignAday. I make a point of taking my digital SLR with me whenever I go somewhere that I may want to take pictures. This will be a welcome improvement, but it isn’t enough to compel me to upgrade.

The increased performance and the improved camera have combined to facilitate video capture and editing. I may use this capability occasionally, but like my Nikon, I carry a high definition, digital video camera whenever I go someplace that I might want to record. And while I expect the video editing features are well designed, I’d much rather wait to do it in iMovie on my two 20” displays.

The compass is really interesting. I like the idea of orienting the map to the direction I am facing. I really look forward to having an application that can give me turn-by-turn directions. I’m sure, too, that there will be a host of developers that come up with genuinely useful applications that take advantage of it.

The voice control may be the most compelling addition. My old Motorola had voice dialing, which I used quite a bit. The iPhone 3G S will also allow you to control the iPod portion of the phone.

Both MMS and tethering have potential to be useful, but AT&T is dragging its heels on these features. The majority of new features are coming in the iPhone 3.0 release, which I’ll install on my current iPhone.

Considering that my contract will be up in August, and that I don’t yet have GPS or 3G, I’ll probably eventually upgrade to the new model, but I don’t feel any urgency to do so. The 3.0 release in a few days will make my phone seem new without a change in hardware.

Tabs vs. Title Bar

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:29:17 -0400

The Safari 4 Beta drew a lot of criticism for its implementation of tabs. Perhaps drawing some inspiration from the recently released Google Chrome, that version of the browser moved the tabs to the top of the window, above the address bar. This makes a lot of sense, as the address shown in the bar changes as you change tabs. For a strict tab metaphor, anything that changes should be contained within the tabbed pane.

However, unlike Chrome, Apple decided to replace the title bar, or more accurately, merge the tabs with the title bar. It broke all windowing conventions and caused confusion. Safari was the first browser to introduce draggable tabs, and now there was a conflict. Where do you click to drag a tab, and where do you click to drag the window? Apple decided that dragging the window was more important, so the majority of the tab/title bar was given to window dragging. The right corner of each tab was textured as the grip for dragging a single tab. This took some time to get used to, but I became comfortable with it. Another issue was that the tabs automatically grew to fill the width of the window. As a result, the tabs would all shift every time a tab was added or removed from the bar. This could be disorienting. The bigger problem, to my mind, was the inconsistency within the operating system. Why should a single application have a completely different title bar from all the others?

I just installed the final release of Safari 4 and was surprised to discover that the tabs have been moved back down below the address bar. I find this interesting, and uncharacteristic. Apple doesn’t tend to go back on its changes. They have decided that this tabbing model isn’t optimal, so I’m expecting them to change it again in the not too distant future. For now, given the choice between this model and the Beta model, I think they made the right decision.

In the Details: Unlock

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:01:33 -0400

In my previous car, pulling the handle on the driver-side door would automatically unlock the door. The rest of the doors had to be unlocked before the handle would open the door. This always seemed to confound my co-workers, who thought I had the child locks on.

My new Cube has a very thoughtful feature. It unlocks all of the doors, not when the engine stops, but when the key is removed from the ignition. It takes removal of the key as the intention to exit the vehicle, which nearly always is correct. This also could serve as a reminder for the driver to take his key with him, as his door won’t open until he removes the key or specifically unlocks the door. Not only do the passenger doors all unlock, but the tailgate as well. After all, you might want to remove something from the trunk, and why should you have to unlock that separately?

If only this title could be set in Sabon

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:06:09 -0400

Jeffrey Veen announced a new project a few days ago that has stirred a fair amount of excitement in the web design community. In a nutshell, Typekit will be a service that allows you to license fonts for use on the web, serving them up through a single line of JavaScript in your code. The big news here isn’t the technology—it will rely on the browsers’ support for font linking. The problem that Veen and company are trying to solve is the licensing issue. Fonts are not intended to be freely distributed, which is, in effect, what you are doing if you use them in a webpage.

While I am excited about the possibilities of using more than the standard OS-supplied fonts, I’m taking the Typekit announcement with several grains of salt.

For one thing, their model makes your website dependent on a live internet connection and the availability of their server. The former arguably won’t be an issue for typical websites, as a live internet connection is required for anyone to get to them in the first place. However, such is not the case for many web applications, which is what I work on. My company’s products can’t be dependent on connectivity. As for the latter, I think many people will be wary of a single point of failure. Even Google has not been immune to occasional outages.

There is also a question as to exactly how it works. What is that single line of JavaScript doing? Is it going to degrade performance? And there is the question of cost. Jeffrey mentioned that they will provide a free service and a paid service. I’m expecting that the free service will allow you to, say, specify a font or two for your blog, but the paid service will be required for any commercial use. How much will it cost? Will it be based on the number of fonts used, the number of pages they are used on, or something else? Is it a one-time fee or a subscription model? It may be hard for designers to sell their customers on the benefit of paying for TypeKit when they can use the standard fonts for free.

I’m interested to learn more about it, and I hope that they are able to address all of these concerns satisfactorily. Regardless, I think it’s great that they are working on it—there certainly won’t be a solution if nobody tries. As I already said, the licensing is the biggest issue here, and Typekit has a good chance of getting foundries and type designers to think differently about the way type is sold, licensed, and distributed. That, in itself, would be a significant accomplishment.